


Bird the Second – Black Kite - Five Views of the Hunt

by BardicRaven



Series: Three Birds of Prey for your Yuletide Delight [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Birds of Prey (Comic), Green Arrow (Comics)
Genre: 5+1, Angst, Crueltide, Different Opinons, Different views, Five Plus One, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:13:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5442923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hunt may be a necessary thing to all s/heroes, but how it is seen, and practiced, varies widely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fear is What Drives You: Bruce Wayne (Batman)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mercutia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercutia/gifts).



> ##### And now, for something completely different. From fluff to angst. To celebrating life to looking at the whys of dealing death.
> 
> ##### Yule-Goat-to-be-Named-Later

Fear. That's what drives people. This is a truth that Bruce Wayne has learned all-too-well. Fear of poverty had led that man to rob his mother of her pearls, fear for his mother's safety had led his father to speak out, to strike back on her behalf, fear of what would happen next is what led the thief to kill.

Fear of the dark is what led him to the tools that let him hunt, if not in safety, then at least successfully.

Fear is what let him know how to strike back. Because what he feared, he could use to make others fear.

The darkness. 

The Bats.

The unknown and the unknowable.

Fear is what drives people. Fear is the master of all people. So, to master others, you first must master fear.

In yourself.

In others.

Learn how to keep it from being used as a tool to master yourself. Learn to use it as a tool to master others.

He drives himself and the others relentlessly, uncaring of the carnage his rigid beliefs bring.

For the thing is, for the shameful secret is, he hasn't mastered fear after all.

Yes, he uses it. Yes, he knows full well how to make others fear him. But that knowledge doesn't hide the fact that underneath, that little boy still lives, afraid.

Afraid of the dark. Afraid of being alone, lost.

Afraid of dying alone, unloved.

He uses that fear, lets it drive him, refuses to be mastered by it.

But always, always, it lurks, it lingers in the background, dark shadows bat-winged in the night.

Someday, if he's not careful, it will catch him. Catch him in its cold claws and never let him go.

So he practices caution, care, and self-discipline, always. His rigid rules are all that stand between him and the darkness. So it is by those rules that he lives. A bit ironic for a costumed vigilante, but truth nonetheless.

They say that who you are is where you put your attention, so it not surprising that this boy-turned-man lives in fear - the fear he carries in his heart, the fear he deals to others.

It is not surprising that fear is this hunter's weapon.

For who he is, it could be nothing less. Nothing else.

O>>>\-----------> O>>>\-----------> O>>>\----------->


	2. Rising from the Ashes: Barbara Gordon (Batgirl, Oracle)

Once Barbara Gordon hunted as the Batgirl, swinging over the streets of Gotham, bringing aid and justice to those who needed it, the citizens of a dark city, lost in the night.

Then a bullet felled her, and for a time, it appeared that she might hunt no more.

But that was not her way. No, she was made of both sterner and more flexible stuff than that.

She could no longer hunt as she had been, but that didn't mean that she couldn't, and wouldn't, find a new way.

So she did. She learned to hunt in the virtual world, and to help her former teammates as they continued to hunt in the waking world.

And if it's not the same, it's enough. The same thrill, the same satisfaction. She may be in a wheelchair, but the more fool anyone who thinks that makes her a cripple. 

No, she's not a cripple.

She's a hunter. Same as any of them. Her weapons are her wit and her intelligence, her hands and her tech. 

No less deadly for all that.

She is a hunter.

She is Oracle.

Risen from the ashes, still a huntress in the night.

O>>>\-----------> O>>>\-----------> O>>>\----------->


	3. Oh, that the world could be another way: Dinah Lance (Black Canary)

Dinah Lance takes no pride in what she does. Or rather, she takes pride in the helping, but not in the technique that she uses to help.

Which means that she is forever doomed to both long for the hunt and hate the fact that she is so very good at it.

She loves that she can help people, step in and save people who cannot save themselves, who cannot help themselves. But she hates the violence that is her stock in trade, hates the necessity of it, hates that she is so very good at it.

She does not understand her lover who has no such qualms. His is a simpler world, in some ways. He is content to play the hunter and does not look back, does not regret.

But she regrets. Oh, how she regrets.

But she does not let it stop her. Every night, she dons the costume and goes out on the streets once more.

Another night. Another hunt. Another black regret for the Black Canary.

O>>>\-----------> O>>>\-----------> O>>>\----------->


	4. A Way, A Means: Helena Bertinelli (The Huntress)

As much as Dinah regrets, Helena anticipates. Like Oliver, she has no such qualms either. Her cape-name is The Huntress and she is perfectly willing to play the role. 

She grew up with violence and sees nothing wrong with using it as a tool. The hunt as a way to further your goals. It is up to you whether those goals bring blessing or bane.

This is a philosophy that brings her into conflict with many of her fellow heroes and heroines. Not Green Arrow, tho', he understands her, or at least her philosophy.

But many of the others, yes, not the least, her teammate, Dinah. They have gone around and around on the subject, neither successfully convincing the other of the error of their ways.

It's all in where you come from. Helena Bertinelli, the daughter of mobsters, grew up around men who thought nothing of killing for money, for revenge, for profit, for respect.

Dinah Lance, the daughter of cops, who, while no more law-abiding in the strict sense of the word than her teammate, still believes in the rules, still has that dream of a world where that kind of violence is no longer necessary.

For Helena, those dreams died along with her family. Now, she lives, and hunts, for revenge.

And heaven help anyone who tries to stop her.

O>>>\-----------> O>>>\-----------> O>>>\----------->


	5. Death is a part of Life: Oliver Queen (Green Arrow)

Oliver Queen, is, in his own way, a study in contrasts. He believes, not so much in the law, as in right and wrong.

He's gone through his own trials by fire, his own lessons painfully learned. His views of the hunt are more practical. Understandable when you consider that his first hunts were for the food to keep himself alive. 

He views his hunts now with the same practicality. He does not glory in the kill, in the dealing of pain and death, but neither does he shrink from it.

A thing that has gotten him into trouble with his peers on more than one occasion.

It does not change his views, but it does wear on his spirit.

Not the hunt. But the blind condemnation from those who should know better, or at least be more willing to acknowledge the inherent contradictions of their pursuits.

He does not deny that passion rules his life. It's what differentiates him from Bruce, a factor, among many, that has lain between them from the first. 

Passion and practicality blend in his hunting of humans. He believes passionately in what he believes in: his views on right and wrong, the people he cares for.

And when those are betrayed, that too, causes him to hunt.

And to question those who would question him: if not, what's it all for? If the hunt is not there to allow you to stand up for what you believe in, for what the society around you deems as good, despite the contradictions between society and the law, then why have it at all?

And if you do not have the hunt, then there are no heroes, no heroines. Because, at the end of the day, every one of them uses violence to impose their will on others.

Every. Single. One.

What changes, the only thing that changes, is how honest they are about that.

O>>>\-----------> O>>>\-----------> O>>>\----------->


	6. The Hunt: The Birds & the Bats & the Arrows, oh my!

They all have their own reasons to hunt, their own techniques and times. They are not the same ones, but change from person to person, as unique as the personalities involved, often contradictory, every one seen as the final answer. 

Every one of them is damaged goods, and all with a fundamental dissatisfaction with life as it currently stands. But if they did not, they would not do what they do.

They are all flawed, but the one thing they have in common is that they are all trying to make the world a better place.

And that, in the end, is what makes the hunt worthwhile. Acceptable, as a means to an end.

Someday, the hunt will be no longer necessary. And all of them, each in their own way, long for that day to come.

But they all know that that day has not arrived yet, may never arrive. So for now, they don the mask, and go out every night, and do the best they can to bring that world about.

Even if that means the hunt.

O>>>\-----------> O>>>\-----------> O>>>\----------->


End file.
